Rumen-resistant choline chloride can contribute to better liver health. It defats the liver, which significantly reduces the risk of ketosis, or lingering milk fever.
Rumen-resistant choline chloride can contribute to better liver health. It defats the liver, which significantly reduces the risk of ketosis, or lingering milk fever.
The basic principle of the transition period is that the basis must be good. This is not always possible and therefore metabolic disorders are lurking. It may be temporarily necessary to add supplements to rations to prevent metabolic diseases, for example. Choline chloride is a B vitamin that has a positive effect on liver health. It ensures that the liver does not become fat and less ketones. You feed from about three weeks before calving to about four weeks after calving. The product serves as a support during the negative energy balance. It is inevitable with any cow that calves. During that period, every cow is deficient in choline chloride because many vitamins go to the calf.
Preventive application
It is a product that you use preventively during the transition period, explains Jurriën Boerma, account manager at Speerstra Feed Ingredients. “The last weeks before the cow calves, her energy demand is higher because milk production is starting to get going. The calf grows during these weeks and therefore presses against the rumen. The dry matter intake is reduced by pressing the calf.” Because the feed intake does not increase with the feed requirement, the negative energy balance (NEB) is created.
During the negative energy balance, body fat from, among other things, the back is broken down by the liver. “The liver actually works like a filter. If too many fats pass through, then no good energy comes out, but ketone bodies. If there are too many ketone bodies, the cow’s sense of hunger is suppressed. Then she will eat less and become lethargic. The body needs more fat to get energy. In this way, the cow ends up in a downward spiral and ketosis can develop. That is not to say that breaking down body fat is not good, as long as the liver can handle it, body fat is a good source of energy to support the cow. One tool to keep the liver clean is Choline chloride.
Applicable energy
It is therefore important that the body fat that the cow breaks down is used for milk production or as energy for the calf. Speerstra speaks in that case of applicable energy. In order to use the product, it is important that it is a rumen-resistant variant. The grease coating that surrounds it is rumen-resistant. That ensures that most of it passes through the rumen. The coating is broken down in the small intestine. The liver uses the choline chloride.
The supplement usually goes through mixes. It is also a lot easier and faster to feed in a mineral mix or other supplementary feed than mixing it separately in the mixer. “With the right application and the right quality, choline chloride can provide many benefits for the cow,” says Boerma. “Not only can it prevent ketosis, milk production is also higher during peak production and colostrum quality improves.”